Bio-warfare In Middle-earth

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Oh, ok, I see. Makes sense. But you would still face the problem of the poison spreading to your own people. Supply them all with antidotes? Or have so many that Sauron just doesn't care to lose a few?

Yes it isn't that convincing unless he just kept it away from his own people somehow (but that would be a very steady weather pattern). I like your suggestions about the pathetic fallacy as well as what has been said by Morth (and myself ) about medieval and ancient understandings of how disease worked.

Perhaps it was simply a disease which arose in Rhûn (where would Sauron have been in the Third Age without Rhûn to hide him and provide him with regular waves of Gondor-attackers?) and which Sauron encouraged to spread West, and perhaps the "dark wind" was a bit of weather he stirred up to increase a sense of doom and despair to motivate people to lose hope.

Or perhaps it was a spiritual malady like the Black Breath, far vaster in scale but not automatically deadly untreated as the Breath would be. What I mean is it seems some survived the Plague or did not become ill, while it appears that if one was afflicted with the Black Breath it seems that death was certain unless Aragorn turned up with athelas in hand.